We have had a lot of franchises churn out two widely loved and highly successful installments only to have a 3rd that either crashed & burned at the box office, disappointed the majority of fans or both. Spider-Man, Blade, the X-Men and the Matrix are among the growing list of casualties. What assurances do we truly have that Batman won't suffer the same fate?

__________________Michael Joseph Jackson 1958-2009. Gone Too Soon.
May he finally find the peace that eluded him in life.There is only ONE Spider-Man. His name is Peter Parker. He's an adult, and he's straight!

The reason why the third film in these superhero franchises disappointed was because of either a switch in director or studio interference. Neither will be the case for this next Batman, so I am confident it will do more than just escape the third act curse.

__________________Michael Joseph Jackson 1958-2009. Gone Too Soon.
May he finally find the peace that eluded him in life.There is only ONE Spider-Man. His name is Peter Parker. He's an adult, and he's straight!

Good.
I think one of the best ways to avoid the "curse" is to not try to do too much at once. The downfall of most 3rd installments is the pressing need to "wrap up" the series, & throw in everything fans have been asking for regardless of whether the story benefits or not. And often, the 2nd act has some dangling plotline that begs to be resolved in the 3rd but amidst everything else that's going on, can't be done satisfactorily.

__________________Michael Joseph Jackson 1958-2009. Gone Too Soon.
May he finally find the peace that eluded him in life.There is only ONE Spider-Man. His name is Peter Parker. He's an adult, and he's straight!

The problem with the 3rd film in a lot of series' is that they cram a lot into them; characters, villains, action sequences, and so on. The thing with Nolan, however, is that he's bee doing this since Begins and in TDK. He manages lots of characters very well, he connects plots/subplots in a way that doesn't feel very sloppy or rushed, and while Nolan doesn't include a tone of action sequences compared to other films, when he does have them they have tremendous impact and they look great.

The other thing about Nolan is that he's fully grasped the epic scale of Batman's journey/dilemmas. Though TDK is arguably more epic in scale than Begins, there's no question that Nolan has pre-planned this trilogy from the day he was hired and envisioned every chapter of this story on a large scale. Other trilogies seem to literally take each film one at a time, growing in size with each one, wheras Nolan sees each Batman film as roughly equal in size, each chapter playing as important a role in telling the hero's story; just because Begins is an origin film didn't mean that it couldnt be as, or even more epic as a lot of other film's 2nd or 3rd films.

I fully believe in Nolan's ability to provide a satsifying conclusion because A) the guy is a great story teller and knows how to interconnect plots, handle lots of characters and develop arcs, B) the guy already knew 7-8 years ago where his trilogy would go and isn't coming into the 3rd film trying to throw something together based on the previous installments; like I said, his trilogy has an arc, and C) Nolan, as I already noted with Begins and TDK, has been down the route of making epic Batman films; it's nothing new to him.

The failure of other 3rd installments came from poor planning, bad direction, and studio interference. Nolan has planned things out very well, his direction has been more than exceptional, and with the quality films he's churning out, I doubt WB tries to interfere with this one bit.

In a lot of ways, it seems like the filmmakers come off of the first film knowing what they plan to do with the second, then come off the second knowing what they want to do with the third, and then somehow that plan gets derailed. I think the fear of doing a 4th movie, in light of Superman 4 and Batman & Robin, is another part of the reason why these 3rd movies fail so badly.

__________________Michael Joseph Jackson 1958-2009. Gone Too Soon.
May he finally find the peace that eluded him in life.There is only ONE Spider-Man. His name is Peter Parker. He's an adult, and he's straight!

Good.
I think one of the best ways to avoid the "curse" is to not try to do too much at once. The downfall of most 3rd installments is the pressing need to "wrap up" the series, & throw in everything fans have been asking for regardless of whether the story benefits or not. And often, the 2nd act has some dangling plotline that begs to be resolved in the 3rd but amidst everything else that's going on, can't be done satisfactorily.

I truly believe the next Batman film will break the third act curse. We have the same creative team coming back as others have already mentioned as well as the fact that Nolan says he likes to focus on one film at a time. As General Vulcun mentioned, he sort of preplanned this trilogy in a way. I don't think he knew the exact story or villians he would want for the third film when he was making BB but I think he knew where he wanted Batman to go in general.

Another thing we should all know by now is that Nolan doesn't do fan service with his Batman films. He could have easily thrown in nods like the Iceberg Lounge and a quick cameo with Victor Fries in BB or TDK but he didn't because he knows it would add nothing nor benefit the film.

The last thing is that the second film didn't have any major dangling plotlines that need to be resolved in the third film. Batman may be wanted for murder but it wasn't done in a way where the film had a cliffhanger ending. The Dark Knight's ending much like the first Matrix's ending was a perfectly fine way to end that specific film without absolutely needing a sequel to tie things up. Both films left it open for the imagination as to what will happen next.

He can go into this third film however he wants and the only single thing that needs to be carried over is the police treating Batman as a murderer which doesn't necessarily even need to be tied up really.

God I hope so all the 3rd Superhero films have sucked Superman III, Batman Forever, Spiderman 3, X-Men 3, etc. I reckon this will be the one to break the curse, Nolan is very detailed with his films and I doubt he's gonna let us down.

Toy Story 3, not only one of the best, if not the best 3rd film in a series, but one of the best sequels of all time. It built on the themes of the previous films while doing it's own thing as a stand-alone feature (though it works best as a sequel, IMO). The result is a very funny and often touching conclusion to the trilogy.

There's nothing to suggest that Nolan wont be approaching Batman 3 in a similar manner.

Toy Story 3, not only one of the best, if not the best 3rd film in a series, but one of the best sequels of all time. It built on the themes of the previous films while doing it's own thing as a stand-alone feature (though it works best as a sequel, IMO). The result is a very funny and often touching conclusion to the trilogy.

There's nothing to suggest that Nolan wont be approaching Batman 3 in a similar manner.

I don't know if "Toy Story" is the best reference but ok. Particularly where you use the words "funny" and "touching". I seem to recall someone else thinking that the 3rd Batman should be approached in such a manner.

__________________Michael Joseph Jackson 1958-2009. Gone Too Soon.
May he finally find the peace that eluded him in life.There is only ONE Spider-Man. His name is Peter Parker. He's an adult, and he's straight!

I don't know if "Toy Story" is the best reference but ok. Particularly where you use the words "funny" and "touching". I seem to recall someone else thinking that the 3rd Batman should be approached in such a manner.

I think you reeeeeeeeeeally misunderstood what I was saying. Allow me to bold for you the "similar manner" part:

"It built on the themes of the previous films while doing it's own thing as a stand-alone feature"

Being funny and touching was what anyone could hope for in Toy Story 3, not with Batman. The result for Toy Story 3 was what you expected out of that film, and Batman, obviously, will produce different but equally as satisfying results for its own type of film, and I think the idea of Batman 3 doing its own thing while remaining a piece of the Nolan Batman puzzle is an appropiate way to approach the film. It's a method that Toy Story 3 used and brought it success, and it's a method The Dark Knight used and brought it success.

__________________Michael Joseph Jackson 1958-2009. Gone Too Soon.
May he finally find the peace that eluded him in life.There is only ONE Spider-Man. His name is Peter Parker. He's an adult, and he's straight!

I have faith in Nolan on making a good 3rd act, TDK made tons of money I'm sure WB will give Nolan more freedom. But then again Spider-Man 2 was also a hit but Sony botched it with SM3.

__________________A few of the Marvel Superheroes are somewhat niche characters that aren't extremely versatile, thus they don't have a lot of longevity potential. For example, Namor is a water guy, Silver Surfer is a space guy, Dr. Strange is a magic guy, and so on.

the only reason the other movies failed is because either the studio interferred with the script for monetary reasons, or to "please the fans" or to speed up production. or the directior changed, or the writer. christopher nolan does not have ANY of those problems. in fact, he has it all together. so i say the next movie might, I SAID MIGHT, be better then the dark knight ::waits to be mugged by a million crazed fanboys:: anyway july 2012 cant get here fast enough!
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Well, Iron Man 2 isn't quite the crowd pleaser that its predecessor was. And Favreau stayed on without any of the problems that you mentioned.

__________________Michael Joseph Jackson 1958-2009. Gone Too Soon.
May he finally find the peace that eluded him in life.There is only ONE Spider-Man. His name is Peter Parker. He's an adult, and he's straight!